Fragments
by Spun
Summary: Magnus/Alec ficlet collection, currently deader than JFK. Theme 003. Obsession: If you wear too much glitter, you will be attacked by a dinosaur. True facts! Also, guilt issues and poor coping methods abound.
1. Twilight

**Fragments **

(yes, I know it's terribly uncreative, but take a look at the rest of my titles. They're all like that)

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Mortal Instruments_. I don't own _Twilight_, either, and dear lord am I happy about that.

**Warnings: **Random genres, crack, slash, frequently implied sex, _Twilight_, me making shit up and lots of it.

**Notes: **Don't even ask where I'm getting the prompts from, the table's been sitting on my computer since last May and I decided now was the time to do something about it.

The real question: can I actually write one hundred of these? The real answer: probably not. I have the attention span of a sugar-high squirrel. But I'm better at writing ficlets and one-shots than I am at writing chapter fics, so I figured I'd have a go at it. They'll all probably be as weird and pointless as this one, but let's face it, nobody reads my fics expecting a _plot_. You just like my lovely punctuation. :)

* * *

**001. Twilight**

"I don't believe you."

With those four simple words, Alec Lightwood sealed his fate.

Magnus had spent an entire fifteen and a half minutes explaining the plot of _Twilight_ to his culturally-clueless boyfriend – fifteen and a half minutes that could have been put to _much_ better use, considering he was a bit of a sex fiend and Alec was a teenager – and was rewarded with a blank stare. "Vampires," Alec had said.

"Yes."

"That sparkle."

"Yes."

"You're such a liar."

"I'll swear on anything you'd like, it exists."

"I don't believe you."

Well, Magnus simply couldn't have _that_ – while he was a warlock of many vices, lying wasn't one of them. So, on an otherwise nondescript evening, he liberated the film from a shelf in the local video store, stuck it in the DVD player, and talked Alec into watching it without ever actually telling him what it was. After all, if nothing else, his reaction would probably be hilarious.

When the credits rolled, the Shadowhunter's face was caught in the same expression of stupefied horror that he'd been wearing for over an hour. Magnus, feeling as though he'd lost a few IQ points for watching that while sober, poked Alec in the arm. "I told you it was real."

Alec gave him a look that suggested the movie had touched him in inappropriate places before staring at the screen for another five minutes. Just when Magnus began to wonder if _Twilight_ was capable of shutting down higher brain functions, Alec said, "What the _hell_ was that?!", his voice unnaturally shrill.

"That was _Twilight_, dear. Sadly, it's a real movie. And a book."

"But – but –" Alec floundered for a moment, shaking his head in disbelief, "vampires don't _sparkle_ in the sun – they burn! Well, Simon doesn't – but he still doesn't sparkle!"

"The woman who wrote the books took a few creative liberties with mundane vampire myths," Magnus said.

"She – books?"

"There are four of them."

Alec made a sound that could only be classified as a pained whimper and covered his face with his hands.

_Do not laugh_, Magnus told himself firmly, _do not laugh at the poor traumatized Shadowhunter. No matter how funny it is, don't laugh._ With a flick of his fingers, the television turned off, and he leaned over and stroked Alec's arm sympathetically. "It's all right," he soothed, "it's just a movie. It can't hurt you."

"Oh, shut up!" Alec glared at him, glared at the television, glared at the DVD box – then abruptly reached out and turned it face-down.

"Um," the warlock started, trying very hard to control himself. _Don't__ laugh. He will be deeply offended if you laugh._

"They were _looking_ at me," Alec said defensively.

Magnus gave up and laughed. Alec tried to smother him with a couch cushion, and afterward refused to talk to him for two hours, but it was _definitely _worth it.

* * *

Hahaha oh god. I should not write anything while I'm sick ever again.

Reviews are greatly appreciated!


	2. Shock

**Fragments**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Mortal Instruments_.

**Warnings: **Random genres, crack, slash, frequently implied sex, me making shit up and lots of it.

**Notes: **I wrote most of this theme in the school planetarium, between finding Lyra and finding Ursa Major and finding the giant clusterfuck of stars that is Scorpio. It was good. I was proud of it.

And then I left it in there.

So, this is theme two, version two, which I think is pretty terrible except for the ending. Just roll with it and I'll try to make the next one suck less.

* * *

**002. Shock**

"I don't think so."

"You can't say that, you don't know everything about me."

"No, but I still don't think you could really surprise me."

"I could probably tell you _something_ you don't know that would shock you."

Magnus lifted one shoulder in a careless shrug. "I strongly doubt it, darling. I'm forty times your age, there isn't much I haven't heard."

"Forty-four," Alec corrected, focusing on the television and trying not to get sucked into this increasingly repetitive argument. The vapid blonde teenager onscreen was sleeping with some guy she'd picked up at a bar. If he'd kept proper count, this was the sixth one in forty-five minutes. Their conversation had been going on for almost as long. "Point four repeating. Which has nothing to do with it. And there has to be _something_."

"Sorry, sweetheart, but it's true – nothing can shock me anymore. Even if you revealed that you were a cross-dressing, axe-murdering, Avon-selling alien from Neptune, I can't say I'd be particularly astonished. Besides, you'd be lying, you don't fit the profile."

"Do you even know somebody like that?"

"I've known people who have _claimed_ as such." Magnus demurely sipped his drink, which was glowing blue and probably very alcoholic. "Most of them were crazy. Look, Alec, there's nothing particularly shocking or disturbing about you, and that's perfectly all right. It's okay to be normal."

"Fine!" Alec flung his hands in the air, stood up, and stormed off into the kitchen. He loved Magnus more than anything, but sometimes the man was _infuriating_. He didn't have to be so insistent that Alec was boring and average and nothing about him could ever possibly be surprising. It was stupid, childish, and this was _such_ a unreasonable thing to get angry over, but he'd already walked out in a huff, so it wasn't like he could go back in and pretend nothing had happened.

_Great. I'm an idiot._

He took a cup from the cabinet, filled it with water, and sat at the tiny island. Chairman Meow was sprawled across the granite, snoozing; when Alec put the glass down, he cracked open an eye and gave him a suspicious look.

"What?"

The cat rolled to his paws, stretched, and promptly stuck his nose into the glass.

"It's just water. You have water in your dish. Go away."

Chairman Meow mewled at him, looking insulted.

Alec put his head down on his arms. "All right, fine. It's yours." The cat promptly started lapping at the water, and Alec stared out the window and wondered why he was overreacting to something so silly. It didn't actually have anything to do with their conversation, he just hated being told he was average and feeling like he would never manage anything special, even if it was true. He'd gotten enough of that as a kid.

So maybe it made sense. He still felt stupid, though. And Magnus was right, Alec thought, there was nothing about him that could surprise the warlock. Aside from the demon-hunting and occasional near-death experience, his life had been rather unexciting. Magnus had been alive for eight hundred years. If he wasn't remotely fazed by Alec being in love with his foster brother or Clary and Jace's almost-incestuous relationship, nothing Alec could possibly come up with would shock him, and he should quit sulking already. He sighed, dumped the rest of his water down the drain, and wandered back out into the den, prepared to admit defeat.

Of course, as soon as he crossed the threshold, Magnus said, "It's not that big of a deal, you know. I'm un-shockable. Don't feel bad.", and Alec was annoyed all over again. That wasn't the _point_. Throwing Magnus a dirty look (which was met with a bright smile), he slumped onto the couch, keeping an entire cushion between himself and the warlock. The blonde on television was now trying to seduce her teacher – or maybe it was a different blonde this time. Maybe it was a different _show_. All of the baffling teenage dramas Magnus seemed to like so much looked exactly the same to him. Who would really want to date their teacher, anyway? It sounded like it would be awkward, having to sit through class and try to hide the fact that you had a relationship that was decidedly less than professional, and it was probably illegal as well as uncomfortable, and… _wait..._

Without taking his eyes off the screen, Alec said, "I had a crush on Hodge until I was eleven."

Magnus choked on his drink.

* * *

Man, I don't even _know_. Reviews are always appreciated!

(I wonder who ended up finding version one, anyway… perhaps there is one very confused janitor sitting in his house somewhere, wondering what sort of strange child would write a thing like this.)


	3. Obsession

**Fragments**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own _Mortal Instruments_.

**Warnings: **Random genres, crack, slash, frequently implied sex, **EXTREME** overuse of the word 'glitter' (it's one of those words that just doesn't have a synonym), me making shit up and lots of it.

**Notes: **I've been sick for a few days (yes, again) – sorry about the long wait.

I'm not quite sure what happened with this ficlet, but I don't like it. It started out in Cracktown, headed to WTF City, took a detour to Mild Angst-ville, and ended up in Zimbabwe.

* * *

**003. Obsession**

Alec cleared his throat. "Magnus."

"Yes?"

"There are sparkles on my bag. _Pink_ sparkles."

Magnus glanced over his shoulder. Alec was sitting cross-legged on the mattress, examining his satchel, which had a noticeable smear of pink glitter on the bottom. "Oh, sorry about that – I thought I spilled some earlier."

With a loud sigh, Alec started brushing the glitter from his bag. "I think we need to talk about this."

"I _said_ I was sorry. I was on the phone – with you, incidentally – and I couldn't tell whether I'd actually dropped any or not, and then I forgot. It'll come off… eventually."

"This isn't about the bag. Magnus, you have a problem."

"Yes, I do," Magnus said, pawing through a drawer full of half-empty cosmetics, "I had an eyeliner pencil this morning, and now I can't find it. It's my favorite one, too."

"What? No – you have a glitter obsession, and it's taking over your life," Alec said gently, almost like he thought Magnus would take this startling revelation badly.

"I do not," Magnus said with as much dignity as he could muster while rearranging piles of makeup. "I _like_ glitter. Like does not equal obsess over."

"I _like_ strawberries, but that doesn't mean I'm going to cover myself with them."

_Too bad_, Magnus thought. It was an excellent mental image, though. "Well, I understand where you're coming from, and I _would_ take your opinion into consideration, but right now, I'm not really sure you can even see straight. Anyway, I don't really see what's wrong with it. Glitter is very eye-catching."

"Yes, but there's glitter on everything you own. There's glitter on a lot of things _I_ own. I haven't forgotten what you did to my phone, either. You are obsessed, Magnus."

"I disagree."

Alec gave him a long-suffering look. "All right." He grabbed his satchel and dragged it into his lap, digging out his notebook and a pen. "I'll show you, then."

Magnus waited. When it didn't look like Alec would explain what he was going on about anytime soon, he turned back around to his vanity. Five minutes and a lot of sorting later, he had restored a chaotic order to his things and discovered that he was somehow almost out of plain silver glitter. He shook the nearly-empty container, frowning. He hadn't used it, and the anal-retentive Shadowhunter on his bed would sooner die than touch a tube of glitter… that left one suspect. He eyed Chairman Meow, who was staring at the window, fluffy tail twitching madly. Did cats eat glitter? It had never happened before during a few centuries of feline ownership, but Chairman Meow was notorious for eating odd things – shoelaces, dust bunnies, a vampire masquerading as a dust bunny, entire dill pickles, eyeliner… wait, maybe _that_ was what had happened to his favorite eyeliner!

"Here."

Magnus, abruptly torn from his thoughts, turned around on the bench. Alec was holding out a piece of paper, looking at him expectantly. The pen cap was in his mouth. Curious, Magnus took the paper and unfolded it.

It was a startlingly accurate drawing of him, despite the lack of color. He looked very happy, probably because he was surrounded by dozens of tiny stars, and the speech bubble next to him read, 'I'm Magnus Bane! There's glitter everywhere! I'M SO HAPPY!!!'. It was really quite adorable. Less adorable was the volcano he was standing on the edge of. And the giant meteor plummeting from the sky. The dinosaur looming behind him with its mouth open was a nice touch, though.

"So…" Magnus started, "am I going to be eaten, flattened, and fried all at the same time, or is there some sort of order?"

"Probably at the same time." Alec stuck the cap on his pen, then shoved it and the notebook back into his satchel. "But I'd vote for the dinosaur, personally."

"I see." Magnus regarded the drawing for another minute, and propped it up against the mirror – it was too cute not to keep. Then he picked up one of the tubes of glitter and hid a smirk as an idea began to take form. "All because I like glitter? Seems a tad farfetched, if you ask me."

"Well, maybe dinosaurs are attracted to glitter. Did you ever think of that?"

"No," Magnus said honestly, "I can safely say I have never pondered the correlation between glitter and dinosaur attacks." He slid off the bench and made his way over to the bed, draping himself across the mattress with a yawn. "You're going to be miserable in the morning, you know."

"It _is_ morning. And whose fault is that, anyway? You could have _told_ me that stuff was spiked."

"I did. Twice, in fact."

Alec opened his mouth as if to retort, then paused. "Wait… right, you did. Well, never mind, then." He closed the last buckle on his bag and lay down, stretched out on his stomach so they were lying hip to hip. Magnus ruffled his hair. "Why do you always have to play with my hair?" Alec asked, folding his arms under his head.

"No reason," Magnus said innocently. Alec watched him, blue eyes filled with suspicion. "Oh, don't glare at me, you like it." He smoothed the soft, fine hairs at the nape of Alec's neck and smiled when the Shadowhunter's eyes fluttered closed. "Really, I'm waiting for you to start purring."

"Shut up…"

Magnus traced the curve of his cheek, then poked him in the forehead. "Stop worrying."

"I'm not."

"You are – you scrunch up your nose when you worry, and as cute as it is, you're not supposed to be worrying anymore. She's fine."

Alec dug his teeth into his lower lip, picking a stray blue sparkle off his arm. Then he shifted closer so he was practically on top of Magnus and buried his face in his neck.

It had started out as a typical night – Magnus had just returned from Queens, where he'd been enlisted to reattach a werewolf's arm. _Why_ nobody ever thought to call someone else, he had no idea, but he hadn't had a decent paying job in a while, so off he went. Alec was busy fighting some random demon in the bowels of Manhattan with the rest of the Looney Toons. They both had wildly unpredictable schedules and almost never bothered to plan anything, so Magnus wasn't at all surprised when he got out of the shower and found Alec sitting on his bed. "Just show up" had long ago become a way of life.

They made small talk. Magnus went looking for a shirt but didn't try very hard to actually find one (and somehow, he doubted Alec minded too much). Chairman Meow, who had decided a long time ago that _he_ was involved in this relationship, curled up in the Shadowhunter's lap and did his 'Cute Sleepy Kitten' routine until he spotted a fly climbing up the outside of the window and went ballistic. It would have continued to be a typical night if Magnus hadn't noticed that Alec was systematically shredding the already-frayed edges of his blanket.

Little alarm bells went off in Magnus's head. Alec had piles of nervous habits, but he only tried to destroy things when something was _really_ bothering him.

He couldn't get a lot of details – if he pressed, Alec would just clam up and insist he could work out his own problems – but from what he gathered, sometime during their fight against Evil Sewer-Dwelling Demon #2,312, Isabelle had been poisoned. It was hardly anything serious, since they'd had an antidote back at the Institute. However, Alec had an acute case of 'Overprotective Older Brother Syndrome', and when he'd turned up at twenty of two, he had been upset and irritable and anxious because Jace had kicked him out of the Institute and told him to stop fussing over his sister before she stabbed him in the throat. Magnus wasn't concerned – partially because he was certain she'd be okay, mostly because this was the same girl who kept sending him text messages outlining the horrible things she would do to him if she even _suspected_ he was taking 'indecent liberties' with her brother. Alec, on the other hand, was deeply preoccupied with protecting his siblings, to the point of neglecting his own safety, and he considered it some kind of personal failure if one of them got hurt. The fact that Isabelle was _fine_ seemed to have escaped him. Magnus had said as much, but Alec insisted that didn't matter, because she could have been killed because he wasn't paying attention and then he'd be that much closer to alone. By that point, Magnus was confused, mildly annoyed, and under the impression that Alec had serious abandonment issues and no way of coping with them.

The proper response to this revelation was probably _not_ to get him drunk.

He did it anyway. Alec was composed and quiet now, if a little strange, and he wasn't trying to turn an innocent blanket into a pile of red threads anymore. Sure, it wasn't the best solution – he'd be sick in the morning and there were doubtlessly several less-morally-reprehensible ways of calming someone down – but Magnus hadn't worried. He had things he felt guilty about and things he should feel guilty about but didn't (the second list was quite a bit longer), and this was the latter. After all, he had warned him that the drinks were spiked, and he'd talked him into eating first, so very little of the eventual hangover would actually be his fault.

There was such a gap between them – Alec had a guilt complex the size of Iowa, and Magnus didn't give a damn at all.

_Maybe_, Magnus thought tiredly, _we should start rubbing off on each other._

There was a loud _thump _as Chairman Meow threw himself at the window for the seventh time. The fly looked unimpressed.

"We should really go to sleep," Magnus said. "It's four-thirty in the morning, and you ought to get some rest before the hangover kicks in."

"Mm." Alec was quiet for a few minutes, twisting the fabric of Magnus's shirt (he'd eventually put one on) into bunches and smoothing it out. Then he sighed and closed his eyes. "…you put glitter in my hair, didn't you."

Magnus yawned again, covering his mouth with a blue-speckled hand. "It's _very_ fetching."

"Disturbed glitter fetishist," Alec muttered.

"Look at it this way – it sets off your eyes beautifully."

"I'll be _really_ annoyed about this later."

"Of course you will."

"Don't patronize me. I'm going to throw up on you when I wake up."

"Love you too, darling."

* * *

Reviews are always appreciated!

(I poked my head into the planetarium the other day… theme two appears to be lost forever. I hope my Astronomy professor didn't find it and recognize my handwriting. That would be _awkward_.)


End file.
